Kurt Georg Kiesinger

Kurt Georg Kiesinger (6 April 1904-9 March 1988) was Chancellor of West Germany from 1 December 1966 to 21 October 1969, succeeding Ludwig Erhard and preceding Willy Brandt.

Biography
Kurt Georg Kiesinger was born in Ebingen, Wurttemberg, German Empire in 1904, and he worked as a lawyer in Berlin from 1935 to 1940. To avoid conscription into the Wehrmacht during World War II, he found work at the Foreign Office in 1940, and became deputy head of the Foreign Office's broadcasting department. During his service at the Foreign Office, he was denounced by two colleagues for his anti-Nazi stance, despite Kiesinger having been a Nazi since 1933. Despite controversy surrounding his membership of the Nazi Party and his work for the Foreign Office during the war, he had an active political career in West Germany. He was an MP for the CDU from 1949 to 1958, and then from 1969 to 1980. He was Minister President of Baden-Wurttemberg from 1958 to 1966, and then he succeeded Ludwig Erhard as Chancellor to head a coalition with the SPD. Encouraged by his Foreign Minister, Willy Brandt, he attempted a careful softening of West Germany's attitude to the German question, and successfully overcame the country's economic crisis. The CDU lost the 1969 elections when the SPD gained sufficient strength to form a government with the Free Democratic Party of Germany, and in 1971 Kiesinger resigned as party leader.